glory
/ˈɡlɔːri
/noun (plural glories) [mass noun]
1High renown or honour won by notable achievements: to fight and die for the glory of one’s nation...
- He also delighted in seeing the girls team achieve such honour and glory over the past five years.
- For club and county it is about bringing honour and glory to one's native heath, family, friends and neighbours and the people you were brought up with.
- The heroic deeds of this brave and noble Irishman have brought honour and glory to his native land.
Synonyms
renown, fame, prestige, honour, distinction, kudos, eminence, pre-eminence, acclaim, acclamation, celebrity, praise, accolades, laurels, recognition, note, notability, credit, repute, reputation, name, illustriousness, lustre
informal bouquets
rare laudation
2Magnificence or great beauty: the train has been restored to all its former glory...
- Work has begun to return a Scarborough beauty spot to its former glory with a £100,000 facelift by engineers.
- We work very hard to restore this magnificent building to its former glory and this is a very obvious setback.
- The great Chinese traveller Huien Tsang visited this place and wrote of its glory and beauty.
Synonyms
magnificence, splendour, resplendence, grandeur, majesty, greatness, impressiveness, gloriousness, nobility, pomp, stateliness, sumptuousness, opulence, beauty, elegance, brilliance, gorgeousness, splendidness
2.1 [count noun] (often glories) A thing that is beautiful, impressive, or worthy of praise: the glories of Paris...
- Her compositions were childish compared to the glories of baroque counterpoint.
- This is best secured by enabling people to appreciate the glories of our wildlife at first hand.
- It all adds up to a real treasure trove, and a fine summary of the glories of European cinema.
Synonyms
wonder, beauty, delight, wonderful thing, glorious thing, marvel, phenomenon;
sight, spectacle
2.2The splendour and bliss of heaven: images of Christ in glory...
- As Jesus prays, heaven's glory opens and God's Spirit-dove descends upon him.
- They experience spiritual bliss and divine glory according to their individual spiritual capacities.
- This is an example of the ways in which Satan and his followers attempt to mimic the glory and splendor of heaven in hell.
3Praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to a deity.Adam and Eve were not only to glorify God in behavior, but they were to offer intelligent glory and praise to God....
- All thanks and praise, glory and honour, to yours at all times in every place.
- The credit, the praise, the glory, and the thanks always go to God.
Synonyms
praise, worship, glorification, adoration, veneration, honour, reverence, exaltation, extolment, homage, tribute, thanksgiving, thanks, blessing
rare laudation, magnification
4 [count noun] A luminous ring or halo, especially as depicted around the head of Christ or a saint.Our country, our homes and even our lives are all things of shadow which will one day disappear in the light of the glory of Jesus Christ....
- The sun set in a glory, and twilight arrived with gracefully gleaming stars, and a full golden moon on the horizon.
- Contemplation of Christ's radiant glory could be taken in such a way as to point away from the suffering Christ, but this need not be so.
verb [no object] (glory in)
1Take great pride or pleasure in: they gloried in their independence...
- Citizens of a newly formed Protestant nation that gloried in its hard won independence from Catholic Europe, they painted not for rich nobles, but for the common man.
- Others take pride in an array of quality cookware, or glory in the grunt under the bonnet.
- In Johnson's England ambitious politicians had been cloaking themselves in patriotism since the 1730s, and George III himself had begun his reign glorying in the name of Britain.
Synonyms
take great pleasure in, exult in, rejoice in, delight in, revel in;
relish, savour, greatly enjoy;
take great pride in, preen oneself on, congratulate oneself on, be proud of;
boast about, crow about, gloat about
informal get a kick out of, get a thrill out of
archaic plume oneself on, pique oneself on
1.1Exult in unpleasantly or boastfully: readers tended to defend their paper or even to glory in its bias...
- He is politically incorrect, and glories in it with ecstatic gloat.
- She relished combat and gloried in opposition.
- Black-eyed and skeletal, she seemed to be almost glorying in her predicament.
Phrases
glory be!
to glory
in one's glory
Origin
Middle English: from Old French glorie, from Latin gloria.